Lewis Lazare profiled Felicia Middlebrooks in the Sun-Times today, as she marks 25 years with WBBM-AM 780. The profile is very generous to Middlebrooks and spends very little time highlighting what may be most infamous moment in her career:

Middlebrooks made headlines herself in March 2002 when she and WBBM came to an impasse on her contract negotiation and they announced they were parting company. She was off the air for nearly two weeks, but returned after the Rev. Jesse Jackson spoke with the bosses at Infinity Broadcasting, and Middlebrooks and WBBM came to terms.

She calls the contract dispute a “glitch” in her career. She said she did what she felt she had to do at the time, but that she never wanted to leave WBBM.

That’s it? Lazare lets her get away with calling it a, “glitch”. I’m not sure how you can let a so-called journalist gloss over such a shameful chapter in her career without pressing her for more information on her motivations and state of mind at the time. It’s hard to imagine that she’d be able to explain why her first inclination during a contract dispute was to call in Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Lazare also leaves out any mention of the May 2003 incident at the UIC commencement ceremony where Middlebrooks gave an address. She concluded her remarks by exhorting the graduates to, “Go Fighting Illini!” Unfortunately, their mascot is the UIC Flames not the Illini. I guess you can’t expect a journalist to always get her facts straight.